Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn

The thesis presents usefulness of duality between graph and his adjacency matrix. The teoretical part provides the basis of graph theory and matrix algebra mainly focusing on sparse matrices and options of their presentation witch takes into account the number of nonzero elements in the matrix. The thesis includes presentation of possible operations on sparse matrices and algorithms that basically work on graphs, but with help of duality between graph and his adjacency matrix can be presented with sequence of operations on matrices.
Practical part presents implementation of some algorithms that can work both with graphs or their adjacency matrices in programming language Java and testing algorithms that work with matrices.
It focuses on comparison in efficiency of algorithm working with matrix written in standard mode and with matrix written in format for sparse matrices. It also studies witch presentation of matrices works beter for witch algorithm.

Graph algorithms in the language of linear algebra

Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation

Aim/Purpose: This systematic literature review investigates the underlying factors that influence the gap between the popularity of online learning and its completion rate. The review scope within this paper includes an observation of possible causal aspects within the non-ideal completion rates in online learning environments and an identification of recommended strategies to increase retention rates.

Background: While online learning is increasingly popular, and the number of online students is steadily growing, student retention rates are significantly lower than those in the traditional environment. Despite the multitude of studies, many institutions are still searching for solutions for this matter. 

Methodology: A systematic literature review was conducted on 40 studies published between 2010 and 2018. We established a set of criteria to guide the selection of eligible articles including topic relevance (aligned with the research questions), empirical studies, and publication time frame. Further steps were performed through a major database searching, abstract screening, full-text analysis, and synthesis process. 

Contribution: This study adds to expanding literature regarding student retention and strategies in online learning environments within the higher education setting.

Findings: Revealed factors include institutional support, the level difficulty of the programs, promotion of a sense of belonging, facilitation of learning, course design, student behavioral characteristics, and demographic variables along with other personal variables. The recommended strategies identified for improving student retention are early interventions, at-all-times supports for students, effective communication, support for faculty teaching online classes, high-quality instructional feedback and strategies, guidance to foster positive behavioral characteristics, and collaboration among stakeholders to support online students.

Recommendations for Practitioners: Since factors within the open systems of online learning are interrelated, we recommend a collective effort from multiple stakeholders when addressing retention issues in online learning. 

Recommendation for Researchers: We recommend that fellow scholars consider focusing on each influential factor and recommendation in regard to student retention in online learning environments as synthesized in this study. Findings will further enrich the literature on student retention in online learning environments.

Future Research: Future research may investigate various data-mining and analytics techniques pertaining to detection and prediction of at-risk students, the efficacy of student support and faculty support programs, and ways to encourage struggling students to adopt effective strategies that potentially engender positive learning behaviors. 



/pdf/factors-contributing-to-student-retention-in-online-learning-4rm28v7ltq.pdf

Factors Contributing to Student Retention in Online Learning and Recommended Strategies for Improvement: A Systematic Literature Review

http://library.um.ac.id/free-contents/downloadpdf.php/buku/evaluating-training-programs-the-four-levels-donald-l-kirkpatrick-and-james-d-kirkpatrick-29943.pdf

Evaluating training programs : the four levels / Donald L. Kirkpatrick and James D. Kirkpatrick

Business platform models frequently require continuous adaptation and agility to allow new experiences to be created and delivered to customers. To understand user behavior in online systems, researchers have taken advantage of a combination of traditional and recently developed analysis techniques. Earlier studies have shown that user behavior monitoring data, as obtained by mouse tracking, can be utilized to improve user experience (UX). Many mouse-tracking solutions exist; however, the vast majority is proprietary, and open-source packages do not provide the resources and data needed to support UX research. Thus, this paper presents: 1) the development of an interaction monitoring application titled Artificial Intelligence and Mouse Tracking-based User eXperience Tool (AIMT-UXT); 2) the validation of the tool in a case study conducted on the Website of the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service (BFR); 3) the definition of a new relationship pattern of variables that determine user behavior; 4) the construction of a fuzzy inference system for measuring user performance using the defined variables and the data captured in the case study; and 5) the application of a clustering algorithm to complement the analysis. A comparison of the results of the applied quantitative methodologies indicates that the developed framework was able to infer UX scores similar to those reported by users in questionnaires.

/pdf/user-experience-evaluation-using-mouse-tracking-and-2ma0zogdzt.pdf

User Experience Evaluation Using Mouse Tracking and Artificial Intelligence

Background. The electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most used diagnostic tool in medicine; in this sense, it is essential that medical undergraduates learn how to interpret it correctly while they are still on training. Naturally, they go through classic learning (e.g., lectures and speeches). However, they are not often efficiently trained in analyzing ECG results. In this regard, methodologies such as other educational support tools in medical practice, such as educational software, should be considered a valuable approach for medical training purposes. Methods. We performed a literature review in six electronic databases, considering studies published before April 2017. The resulting set comprises 2,467 studies. From this collection, 12 studies have been selected, initially, whereby we carried out a snowballing process to identify other relevant studies through the reference lists of these studies, resulting in five relevant studies, making up a total of 17 articles that passed all stages and criteria. Results. The results show that 52.9% of software types were tutorial and 58.8% were designed to be run locally on a computer. The subjects were discussed together with a greater focus on the teaching of electrophysiology and/or cardiac physiology, identifying patterns of ECG and/or arrhythmias. Conclusions. We found positive results with the introduction of educational software for ECG teaching. However, there is a clear need for using higher quality research methodologies and the inclusion of appropriate controls, in order to obtain more precise conclusions about how beneficial the inclusion of such tools can be for the practices of ECG interpretation.

/pdf/educational-software-applied-in-teaching-electrocardiogram-a-1nhao0re2u.pdf

Educational Software Applied in Teaching Electrocardiogram: A Systematic Review.

Handover (HO) is designed to facilitate user mobility and ensure quality of service in mobile networks. In multiple base station (eNodeBs) scenarios, the HO priority process is a problem that has been studied in many surveys, as neglecting the use of priority-based schemes can result in high amounts of HO and, consequently, a decrease in the quality of services provided. This paper presents a Heuristic for Handover based on AHP-TOPSIS-FUZZY (H2ATF), which generates a priority ranking of eNodeBs from the use of (a) the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to define the weights of the criteria; (b) the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank the selected target cells; and (c) the use of an adaptive hysteresis calculated through a fuzzy inference system based on parameters that directly impact the HO process. Through this proposal, it was possible to define the best time and, together, the best antenna to perform the HO. The results demonstrate a decrease of up to 43% in HO ping pong (HPP), a widely used metric in the literature to evaluate HO heuristics.

/pdf/a-novel-heuristic-for-handover-priority-in-mobile-36b4w3h8dq.pdf

A Novel Heuristic for Handover Priority in Mobile Heterogeneous Networks

Persistence in Distance Education: A Study Case Using Bayesian Network to Understand Retention.

User experience on watching live videos must be satisfactory even under the influence of different network conditions and topology changes, such as happening in Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs). Routing services for video dissemination over FANETs must be able to adapt routing decisions at runtime to meet Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements. In this paper, we introduce an adaptive beaconless opportunistic routing protocol for video dissemination over FANETs with QoE support, by taking into account multiple types of context information, such as link quality, residual energy, buffer state, as well as geographic information and node mobility in a 3D space. The proposed protocol takes into account Bayesian networks to define weight vectors and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to adjust the degree of importance for the context information based on instantaneous values. It also includes a position prediction to monitor the distance between two nodes in order to detect possible route failure.

/pdf/adaptive-beaconless-opportunistic-routing-for-multimedia-1ps4b24450.pdf

Marcos César da Rocha Seruffo

Papers

User Experience Evaluation Using Mouse Tracking and Artificial Intelligence

Educational Software Applied in Teaching Electrocardiogram: A Systematic Review.

A Novel Heuristic for Handover Priority in Mobile Heterogeneous Networks

Persistence in Distance Education: A Study Case Using Bayesian Network to Understand Retention.

Adaptive Beaconless Opportunistic Routing for Multimedia Distribution